DDoS Attack
Distributed Denial-of-Serivce Attack (DDoS Attack) According to Wikipedia a DDoS attack is “an attempt to make a machine or network resource unavailable to its intended users.” In other words it is when more than one compromised systems attack a single target. That then causes a service interruption aka a denial of service for people to access the system. When there are tons of incoming messages it will essentially cause the system to shut down. There are many different reasons why a DoS attack would be carried out. Generally a DoS attack is used for a short time or even an indefinitely interruption of services of a host connection, that is connected to the internet. How Does a DDoS Attack Work? The process of a DDoS attack is when someone inserts an issue/compromise with one main computer, which is known as the master. The masters will then go and find other systems to compromise. After a few systems have been attacked the person who inserted the issue/compromise will then instruct the master andthe other systems to launch the attack against the target system. Who is Targeted? Main targets of a DoS attack are usually high-profile web sites that carry credit cards and personal information. Unintentional Denial of Service An unintentional denial of service is when the website doesn’t work, but it isn’t because of a planned attack, but because of overuse. Examples could be a news story, such as when Michael Jackson died in 2009. With so much activity the servers thought it to be attacks and they went into overload. DDoS in Action The largest recorded DDoS attack in history happened in March of 2013. The attack was on the anti-spam non-profit organization Spamhaus. It caused the entire internet to slow down. There was an “online war” between a Dutch hosting company CyberBunker and an anti-span group Spamhaus. It was all because Spamhaus had placed CyberBunker on their spammers list. The chief executive for Spamhaus said that the attacks were at 300 gigabits per second where normally when there are attacks it’s usually 50 gigabits per second. The first attack started on March 15 and CyberBunker’s goal was to take down every major internet system. What does this mean? During the largest DDoS attack there were moments of panic and worry. In the New York Times article Chief executive of CloudFare, Matthew Price, said that due how much data was being streamed you could compare it to a nuclear bomb, there was so much damage that could be done. Comparing the internet to nuclear bombs is pretty drastic but when it means that someone could essentially bring down the government through DDoS it doesn’t seem to drastic. DDoS and the Law Information on DDoS and the law can be found here. “On the criminal side, the primary federal law that applies to most DDoS-related attacks is the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, or 18 U.S.C. §1030. United States Code, abbreviated as U.S.C., is the complete body of constantly revised laws defined at the federal level in the United States. It is divided into titles, then subdivided further into sections/subsections. 10 U.S.C means Title 10 of the United States Code. The symbol § stands for section/subsection. Titles and sections/subsections also have common names that identify them based on the legislation that created or amended them. So the complete reference to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which is Title 10, Section 1030, would be 10 U.S.C. §1030. Subsections are further identified by subordinate letters and numbers in parentheses, so subsection a and sub-subsection 3 would be identified as 10 U.S.C. §1030(a)(3)”